It’s time for part two of Ten Pieces of Equipment for New Formulators ❤️ If you’re looking for part one, you can find it here. You might not need everything in part two straight away, but I think you’ll probably want to have most of these items within the first two months of making. Let’s dive in!
Click here for Ten pieces of equipment for new formulators: Part 1
Want to see all this equipment?
Something to keep in mind; all of this equipment is for making fairly small batches of your formulations. This is partly because that’s best practice for new formulators and anyone working on a new formulation, and partly because that’s all I do. I typically share upwards of 80 new formulations every year—if I made big batches of everything I’d be run out of my home pretty quickly by giant tubs of body butter and hundreds of tubes of lip balm! If you are looking for equipment for scaling up and selling I’m afraid that’s not something I can advise on as it’s something I never do (and have no interest in doing).
Wondering what ingredients you’ll need as a new maker?
- Ten DIY Ingredients for Beginner Formulators: Part 1
- Ten DIY Ingredients for Beginner Formulators: Part 2
Post Overview
Immersion blender
What it’s for
Immersion blenders are an inexpensive and accessible high-shear mixer option for home formulators. I primarily use my immersion blender to create emulsions—lotions, creams, emulsified body butters, etc.
What to consider
The three characteristics I care the most about are the size of the blending head, how easily the head detaches, and how heavy the entire blender is.
The smaller the head, the smaller your batches can be, and smaller batches are a great way to reduce waste as you iterate and learn. You want your batches to be large enough that the blender can be fully submerged so you don’t incorporate a bunch of air. The bigger the head of the blender > the wider your working vessel has to be > the larger your batch has to be.
I like to remove the blending head from the motorized bit of my immersion blender both as I work and to clean it. I have a more expensive immersion blender (the Dynamic MiniPro with the homogenizer attachment) with a hard-to-remove blending head and I don’t like that I have to drag the entire blender to the kitchen to clean it. I also can’t leave the blender sitting in a beaker as it is very top-heavy and will crash over with the motor attached.
And weight! I prefer my blender to be on the lighter side. Speaking of that expensive immersion blender—it’s really heavy! Between the weight and the hard-to-remove blending head, I find I rarely use it for my needs. If you’re making large batches you might really appreciate the extra power, but I wouldn’t recommend investing in one as a new maker.
What I recommend
My immersion blender is an older one made by Braun and I really like it; I purchased it second-hand while I was living in Toronto (2008?) and it’s still going strong over ten years later. For reference, I’m pretty sure the one I have is this one, but holy moly, don’t pay $200 for it.
I know some people prefer an immersion blender with a fully metal blending head; I have both and tend to choose the one with the plastic head because it’s lighter. Let your personal preference guide you here.
pH strips or meter
What it’s for
Checking the pH of your hydrous formulations!
What to consider
Strips are cheaper than a meter, but less accurate. A meter is far more accurate, but also far more expensive.
If you are formulating with lots of ingredients that have very precise pH requirements, you should invest in a digital pH meter. As a new maker, the most likely precise-pH-requirement ingredients you’ll be working with are natural preservatives.
If you don’t want to shell out for a pH meter when you get started, I’d recommend starting with formulations (and ingredients) that don’t have very precise pH requirements. Liquid Germall™ Plus has a broad effective range of 3–8 (with some makers reporting it works at higher ranges as well), making it really easy to work with—you generally won’t have to worry about the pH of your formulations falling outside of that range unless you are working with very acidic or very basic ingredients.
If you are wanting to get into making lotions and surfactant formulations and are finding that daunting enough without adding pH concerns to your plate, here are some good starter formulations:
- Emulsions
- Cleansers
Learn more about the ingredients that dramatically impact the pH of our formulations here.
What I recommend
If you’re planning on getting pH strips, look for the sort that has four little squares to match to different pH values; Lise has written about her favourites (and how to use them) here. If you’re in the USA, you can purchase the strips she recommends from Lotion Crafter.
I have the Apera AI311 (USA / Canada) pH meter, and I like it, though I don’t have a collection of pH meters to judge it against! I purchased this pH meter back in 2017 and I’ve been happy with it.
Gloves
What it’s for
Gloves are a barrier between your skin and your products. They protect your skin from pure ingredients that can be irritating/sensitizing/dye your skin, and reduce product contamination.
What to consider
The more comfortable your gloves are, the more likely you are to wear them. I highly recommend seeking out and purchasing gloves that actually fit. Gloves that are too big impede your dexterity. Buy gloves that come in different sizes, and buy your size. For reference, I generally wear small gloves, and most places that sell gloves in just one size sell them in medium, so I usually have to order online.
What I recommend
I have nitrile gloves; my current box is Kirkland brand (from Costco). You can get thicker rubber gloves (the sort you’d use for dishwashing)—these will last longer, but are thicker, meaning you’ll have less dexterity (and more sweat).
Pipettes
What they’re for
We use pipettes to precisely dispense liquid ingredients—especially ones that we use at low usage rates. The pipettes are not for measuring, they’re for weighing out ingredients drop-by-drop.
What to consider
The size/volume of the pipette is the most important thing to consider. I have 3mL and 1.7mL pipettes; I use the 3mL ones for ingredients like hydrosols and carrier oils, and the 1.7mL ones are mostly used for fragrance and essential oils.
To reduce waste, I often use elastic bands to fasten pipettes to the side of the bottle/ingredient I’ve used them for (upside down, to reduce mess). This allows me to re-use the pipette until it inevitably splits. I don’t do this with potent ingredients like preservatives, essential oils, or fragrance oils, though—that creates far too many opportunities to have undiluted ingredients contact your skin.
What I recommend
Start with some larger (~3–7mL) ones; if you’ve got room in your budget it’s a good idea to get some wee ones as well.
TIP: More viscous liquids, like glycerin, castor oil, and Liquid Germall™ Plus don’t dispense well with pipettes. For ingredients like that, I prefer to swap out the cap for a turret-style one that allows drop-by-drop dispensing without struggling with a spluttering pipette.
Want to see all this equipment?
Item #10
Just like I did with item #10 in Ten DIY Ingredients for Beginner Formulators: Part 2, this last item is a choice between two things depending on what you are most interested in making.
Coffee grinder
What it’s for
You’ll use a coffee grinder for grinding up/powdering ingredients and formulations. I primarily use my DIY-only coffee grinder for making coloured cosmetics, making powdered formulations (like powder-to-foam cleansers), and powdering/grinding down ingredients that need to be smaller for whatever I’m making (botanicals, whole oats, larger flake solid surfactants, etc.). A coffee grinder is a surprisingly useful piece of equipment to have in your studio!
What to consider
The size of the grinding dish is important—the larger the dish, the more it needs to have in it to effectively grind. I’ve found most “normal” coffee grinders are totally fine—I wouldn’t recommend sourcing out something that brags about its capacity as that is likely to be too large.
What I recommend
I’d recommend getting a blade grinder made by Krups or Braun; I’ve had good experiences with their grinders. They last for years!
TIP: Use a sheet of cling film sandwiched between the lid and the grinder to reduce the volume of the grinder—less mess + a faster blend!
Electric beaters
What it’s for
Just as we do in the kitchen, electric beaters are for whipping air into things—mostly body butters and whipped scrubs. If you’re not interested in whipped formulations you won’t need a set of beaters. Electric beaters are not a good alternative for an immersion blender (or vice versa) as they’re designed to whip air into a product, not purée/blend it.
What to consider
I find the beater attachments the most useful, though if yours comes with a whisk as well, score! My mixer is a second-hand Oster one.
What I recommend
My making-mixer is one I picked up for less than $10 at a thrift shop as I don’t make enough whipped formulations to need anything extra-sturdy—I think that’s a good place to start!
If you aim to start a business you might want to eventually invest in a stand mixer—Ariane uses a stand mixer for her whipped body butters, and since the stand mixer has a nice slow-mix mode it’s also useful for other tasks like mixing up bath bombs and shampoo bars.
Honourable mentions
Thermometer
A thermometer is a useful thing to have, but I think you can get on just fine without one in many circumstances, especially if you’re using a water bath to heat things (I discuss this more in this video). I have a Tilswall brand infrared thermometer that I got for about $25 on Amazon, and it works just fine. Whatever you get I recommend something with a fast, digital read-out (so not a traditional mercury-in-glass one!) and something that has a broad enough range to cover formulating temperatures (not a body thermometer—those typically won’t register “you’d be dead at that temperature” temperatures, but those temperatures come up in formulating!).
Mini Mixer
My “Mini Mixer” is a powerful milk frother made by Bonjour. What makes this mixer special is that it takes four AA batteries instead of the more standard two, meaning it’s got a ton of kick and can actually provide the mixing speed and strength needed for small-batch emulsions and other formulations that really need a blendin’. Hooray! Very useful and recommended if you can find one.
Micro Mini Mixer
My “Micro Mini Mixer” is a Badger Air-Brush Co. 121 Paint Mixer; it’s a motorized mixer with a really wee blending head. I use mine almost exclusively for making really tiny batches of colour cosmetics. I probably wouldn’t bother getting one if you have no interest in making makeup.
How can I avoid having little mini bumps on the lotion in jars, weeks after I have poured the formula? I use Optiphen Plus at 1%, adding towards the end before I pour.
I heard a good Tip about Immersion blenders from Keeley from Soy and Shea. To buy 2 so you can change over the moter part easily so you don’t burn it out, and you don’t have to wait till it cools down to start again. This would probably only really be needed if making soap or something that needs a lot of blending. I use mine to make paper clay which it can take sum time to pulp the recycled card I use.
Hi Marie, just wondering if you can clarify your comment in the video re why you prefer using an immersion/stick blender vs. a hand mixer to make an emulsion.
You mentioned that the hand mixer will produce air, which we don’t want.
I started my cream making hobby some decades ago, and always used a Kitchenaid hand mixer with 1 or 2 beaters and always got good results.
While I do also like the stick blender, I find unless you’re making e.g. a double recipe (200ml) there isn’t enough product to do a good blending, especially if you’re making a thick lotion or body butter.
Question: can you at some point in the future, do a test, using both appliances, and let me know what you’ve discovered?
I forgot to add that unless you’ve got a hand mixer that is able to mix at low as well as medium and high, this can be problematic. On someone’s reco, I did get a Kitchenaid, as my Cuisinart didn’t have a low enough speed to do a good job, without having a lot of product splash all over the kitchen countertop.
A bit of an odd question, but would you deem the milk frothier something that could be shared with a kitchen one. My mother has one that she uses a lot and I’d love to be able to use if for certain recipes, so long as I’m not poisoning her coffee.
I am squeamish about creating too much plastic waste, but I’m also very into using pipettes to make measuring liquids less clumsy and arduous. That said, I’d like to re-use pipettes as much as possible. For oils, I get being able to reuse without worrying about bacterial growth (and like your rubber band technique very much!).
So my question is… What about hydrosols or other water-based ingredients? Will a pipette left banded to the hydrosol bottle for awhile in between projects become a breeding ground? or may I rest easy about that? I looked about on the interwebs for information and didn’t find an answer.
I need a bench top mixer
As I find with mixers the plastic corrodes.
Is there about a 3 litre stainless steel benchtop mixer with stainless steel attachments please.
The essential oils destroy all plastic.
Thanking you Valerie
I’m really struggling to find mixing bowls that will work. All of the ones I have seen are either too wide and shallow, or if they are deep enough they are too big. Does anyone have a link to some good mixing bowls to use for my projects?